Nokia launches Lumia 920 with windows phone 8

Nokia unveiled on Wednesday in New York City the Lumia 920 phone, which will introduce the next phase of Windows Phone to run on Windows 8.

The news comes just one day after Apple announced its next-generation iPhone event on Sept. 12, heightening the need for rivals to come out with truly competitive devices.

The new flagship phone supports wireless charging and Nokia’s PureView 41MP camera, along with a 1080p HD camcorder. Its “floating lens” optical image stabilization technology allows users to take sharp, crisp pictures even when it’s dim. It packs a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 processor and built-in wireless charging.

The device also introduced “Nokia City Lens” and “Nokia Maps,” true offline maps with augmented reality. By pointing the Lumia 900 at a city block, the phone reveals virtual “signs” beside the storefronts, with business and location information.

Last year around this time, Nokia announced its two Windows Phone devices — the Lumia 710 and Lumia 800 — during Nokia World in London. The devices were the first phones to run Windows Phone 7, and the first phones to result out of Nokia’s partnership with Microsoft.

However, this isn’t the first Windows 8 device to hit the scene. Samsung last week announced its Windows Phone 8 during the 2012 IFA conference in Berlin, deflecting some of the attention away from Nokia.

But Nokia has a tall order to live up to — in fact, its Lumia 900 device was dubbed one of the best Windows phones to ever hit the market.

Earlier this year, Microsoft announced plans to grow its Windows Phone operating system. Windows Phone 8 is reworked from the ground up and is compatible with Windows 8 itself.

Hulk Smash iPad: With Avengers Initiative, Marvel Brings The Avengers To Mobile

Starting with Iron Man, Disney-owned Marvel famously built a connected cinematic universe for its superhero movies, and the strategy paid off spectacularly this year with the release of The Avengers. Now the company is revealing universe-building aspirations in mobile and social gaming, with the launch of Avengers Initiative, which it’s describing as its biggest mobile release yet.

Patrick Moran, the title’s lead game designer at developer Wideload Games, says Avengers Initiativetakes place in the same universe as Avengers Alliance, a Facebook game released earlier this year. These games, he says, aren’t just an extension of the comic books or the movies, but take place in a consistent world of their own, with “versions of the characters that are perfected for interactive storytelling.” That connection is more than a story- and character-level — players can earn experience (called Marvel XP) in both the Facebook and mobile games, and experience from one game can be redeemed for rewards in the other.

The Avengers Initiative game is also an attempt at episodic storytelling. This first episode stars the Hulk, who has a fight a bunch of bad guys after they’ve been freed by an event called the Pulse. In future installments, you’ll continue the story while playing as other superheroes in the Avengers. The goal, Moran says, is to release a free new episode every two to three months.

That might seem like a pretty rapid turnaround, but that’s because further installments are built on top of the platform that Wideload spent 14 months developing for the game, Moran says. He adds that as a team of “console guys” (Moran, for example, worked on the Mass Effect franchise) Wideload’s goal was to build a game that could stand up to the console experience: “You want to feel like the Hulk.”

I definitely had fun playing Avengers Initiative on my iPad last night. The story (at least what I saw of it) is pretty simplistic, as is any gameplay that doesn’t involve punching the crap out of someone. But hey, the punching itself is pretty satisfying, and the graphics look good.

Avengers Initiative costs $6.99.

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer’s Newest Hire: Jacqueline Reses, EVP Of HR And Talent Acquisition

After appointing former Lockerz CEO Kathy Savitt as Yahoo’s CMO, the company’s new chief Marissa Mayer is staffing another key role—executive vice president of people and development. Mayer has tapped Jacqueline Reses, a private equity exec, to help lead hiring and HR for the company.

                                                           

Prior to Yahoo, Reses led the U.S. media group at private equity firm Apax Partners, she focused on investing in media and technology. In addition, Reses was also involved with the firm’s talent initiatives, including recruiting and training. While at Apax Partners, Reses served on the board of directors or led the investments in Cengage Learning, Intelsat, Nelson Education, Hit Entertainment, and NEP Broadcasting. Additionally, Reses was the CEO of iBuilding Inc., a real estate software business that was launched by Tishman Speyer and Benchmark Capital. Previously, she spent seven years at Goldman Sachs.

Reses, who will report directly to Mayer, will be responsible for leading human resources and talent acquisition as well as corporate and business development globally.

“We are very excited to have Jackie join the Yahoo! team, leading our efforts around finding and retaining the best talent,” said Mayer in a release. “Jackie brings two decades of uniquely applicable operational experience around structuring organizations, programs, and strategies to build world-class teams in media and technology. Her tremendous energy will serve our employees well, and we’re looking forward to her fresh perspectives.”

As Allthingsd’s Kara Swisher reported a few weeks ago, Yahoo’s HR head David Windley departed the company shortly after Mayer was appointed as CEO. Perhaps what’s next up in Yahoo’s hiring plans: a COO.

New iPhone 5 to be launched on September 21

Big Red have just blacked out vacations for all of its staff from September 21st until 30th, and tracking back the previous rumors about Apple’s most anticipated launched of iPhone 5, it’s somehow a good guess that this means the new iPhone will come on the 21st.

 

 The official announcement of the new iPhone 5 is rumored to be slotted on September 12th in which followed by the release 9 days after like to what the previous iPhone launches.

 The scenario is true for the original iPhone until the iPhone 4 which the company has kept 9-day or 12-day gap before the handset hit the shelves after the announcement.

 We can also consider Tim Cook’s preference as the former Apple logistics chief, that will more likely to have the release stick on prior 9 days availability.

 So if we’ll project the schedule ahead, by September 12th, Apple might announce the device and roll out pre-orders. Then on September 21st, the Cupertino-giant will release the device for mass consumption.

 Will multiple series of leaks, photos, parts and speculations there’s no doubt that the device is just around somewhere, now are you ready to stay on long lines to get the new iPhone?

Fingertip tingle enhances a surgeon's sense of touch

OUR fingers are precision instruments, but there are plenty of things they are not sensitive enough to detect. Now we can augment their talents – using wearable electronic fingertips that provide tingling feedback about whatever we touch.

John Rogers of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and colleagues have designed a flexible circuit that can be worn over the fingertips. It contains layers of gold electrodes just a few hundred nanometres thick, sandwiched between layers of polyimide plastic to form a "nanomembrane". This is mounted on a finger-shaped tube of silicone rubber, allowing one side of the circuit to be in direct contact with the fingertips. On the other side, sensors can be added to measure pressure, temperature or electrical properties such as resistance.

 

People wearing the device receive electrotactile stimulation – a tingling sensation caused by a small voltage applied to the skin. The size of the voltage is controlled by the sensor and varies depending on the properties of the object being touched.

Surgical gloves are one potential application. Rogers, who worked with colleagues at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, and Dalian University of Technology in China, says gloves fitted with the nanomembrane could sense the thickness or composition of tissue via its electrical properties. A surgeon could also whittle away at the tissue using a high-frequency alternating current supplied by a battery attached at the wrist and delivered via the nanomembrane itself, says Rogers.

Fiorenzo Omenetto at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts, is impressed. "The work sets the stage for a new generation of devices," he says.

There are applications beyond surgery, too. MC10, the company commercialising the technology, is running animal trials of a nanomembrane "sock" that can be wrapped around the heart. This provides a 3D map of its electrical activity, useful in treating irregular heartbeat.

MC10 is also working with medical device company Medronic to use the membrane inside the heart, sending it in on a limp balloon, which is then inflated to push the membrane onto the heart's interior walls.

Rogers says MC10 is also collaborating with sportswear firm Reebok on a product to be launched by the end of this year. The aim is to build a "body-worn piece of electronics" designed for contact sports, although Rogers declined to say exactly how it will be used.

Steve Jobs was 'receptive' to 7-inch iPad

There is increasing speculation, now backed up by some evidence, that Apple is -- or at least was -- interested in developing a 7-inch version of its groundbreaking iPad tablet.

Thanks to an increasingly vitriolic, ongoing intellectual property trial between Apple and Samsung, documents reveal that Apple was considering a 7-inch iPad back in 2011, and that former Apple co-founder Steve Jobs 'receptive' to the idea before his death. 

"I believe there will be a 7-inch market and we should do one," wrote Apple senior vice president of Internet Software and Services, Eddy Cue, in an email to now Apple CEO Tim Cook and other senior Apple executives on January 24, 2011.

"I expressed this to Steve several times since Thanksgiving and he seemed very receptive the last time. I found email, books, Facebook, and video very compelling on a 7-inch. Web browsing is definitely the weakest point, but still usable," Cue said in the email.

Problems relating to the usability of 7-inch tablets were highlighted by the Nielsen Norman Group. According to the December 2011 report, small tablets such as the Kindle Fire are a compromise because the user interface elements are too small and content isn't optimized for a screen that's bigger than a smartphone yet smaller than that of the iPad.

The email was submitted as evidence in Samsung's cross-examination on Friday, as reported by AllThingsD.

While there is a great deal of evidence to suggest that Apple is working on the next-generation iPhone, an iPad 'Mini' rumors have been far more speculative. Prior to this mention, there have been no official acknowledgement, component leaks or anything to go on beyond rumor and tech gossip. The justification for the iPad Mini seems to revolve around the success of 7-inch tablets such as Amazon's Kindle Fire and Google's Nexus 7. Amazon and Google both have a 7-inch tablet, so Apple needs one too.

However, this leaked email suggest that Apple was thinking about a 7-inch iPad before either the Amazon Kindle Fire or Google's Nexus 7 hit the market, both of which start at the budget price of $199.

The problem with the iPad Mini is that while it is technically possible for Apple to design and build a 7-inch tablet, the problem is pricing the device. It has to be competitive in the face of the Kindle Fire and Nexus 7, but not priced so low as to cannibalize sales of the higher-priced full-sized iPad.

One way that Apple could bring an iPad to market that could compete with the likes of the Kindle Fire and Nexus 7 is by getting the carriers to subsidize the tablet.

Anti-dengue mosquitoes released in Australia

Some 300,000 mosquitoes with the potential to block the spread of dengue fever have been released in Australia, in a large-scale trial of one of the most promising techniques to rid the world of the disease.Dengue fever infects around 100 million people in the tropics each year, killing 40,000 people annually. Insecticides and nets provide the most effective means to control the disease at present, says Scott O'Neill at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, but the dengue virus's range continues to grow. In 2009, for instance, it reached Buenos Aires in Argentina for the first time, while France reported its first locally acquired case of dengue fever in 2010

.Last year, O'Neill and colleagues announced plans to release Aedes aegypti mosquitoes infected with a fruit-fly bacterium called Wolbachia. The bacterium makes the mosquitoes less able tocarry the dengue virus, and it could therefore limit dengue transmission if it were to become widespread in the mosquito population.